As a matter of opinion, I am tired of seeing
entities engage law firms so that they can decline to reveal details
and shield them as “privileged.” There needs to be an exception
for matters of significant public concern, and a
foreign attack on a port should qualify for needing public
disclosure. Or at least a Congressional investigation and
inquiry – if we had a Congress that could actually investigate
anything without turning things into a partisan circus.

On March 5, Yahoo, Inc. (“Yahoo”)
announced a proposed
settlement in In re Yahoo Inc. Securities Litigation,
which was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The $80
million proposed settlement relates to a securities class litigation
stemming from Yahoo’s 2013 and 2014 data breaches. While many
elements of the Yahoo securities class action may be factually
unique, the settlement is a
milestone because it is the first significant securities fraud
settlement from a cybersecurity breach.

“…The digital world continues to expand and
mutate in all sorts of ways that will orphan and otherwise impair
file formats and programs—from ones long forgotten to ones that
work just fine today but carry no guarantees against obsolescence.
Instead of a patchwork of one-off solutions, perhaps there’s a
better way to keep old software running smoothly—a simpler process
for summoning the past on demand. A team at the Yale University
Library is trying to build one. Digital archivists deal with least
two broad categories of artifacts. There are analog objects or
documents scanned into a second, digital life—digitized maps, for
instance, or scanned photos. The other objects are natives of the
digital world. These files can include everything from a simple
compressed image to a game on a CD-ROM to a CAD design for a
skyscraper. The relentless march of new versions and new platforms
makes obsolescence a constant presence, from as soon as digital
objects are conceived…”

In lawsuits about data breaches, the
issue of harm has confounded courts. Harm is central to whether
plaintiffs have standing to sue in federal court and whether their
legal claims are viable. Plaintiffs have argued that data breaches
create a risk of future injury, such as identity theft, fraud, or
damaged reputations, and that breaches cause them to experience
anxiety about this risk. Courts
have been reaching wildly inconsistent conclusions on the issue of
harm, with most courts dismissing data-breach
lawsuits for failure to allege harm. A sound and principled approach
to harm has yet to emerge.

In the past five years, the U.S.
Supreme Court has contributed to the confusion. In 2013, the Court,
in Clapper v. Amnesty International, concluded that fear and anxiety
about surveillance—and the cost of taking measures to protect
against it—were too speculative to satisfy the “injury in fact”
requirement to warrant standing. This past term, the U.S. Supreme
Court stated in Spokeo v. Robins that “intangible” injury,
including the “risk” of injury, could be sufficient to establish
harm. When does an increased risk of future injury and anxiety
constitute harm? The answer remains unclear. Little progress has
been made to harmonize this troubled body of law, and there is no
coherent theory or approach.

In this Article, we examine why
courts have struggled to conceptualize harms caused by data breaches.
The difficulty largely stems from the fact that data-breach harms
are intangible, risk-oriented, and diffuse. Harms with these
characteristics need not confound courts; the judicial system has
been recognizing intangible, risk-oriented, and diffuse injuries in
other areas of law. We argue that courts are far too dismissive of
certain forms of data-breach harm and can and should find cognizable
harms. We demonstrate how courts can assess risk and anxiety in a
concrete and coherent way, drawing upon existing legal precedent.

Farfetch is on the cusp of accomplishing something
rare in the world of luxury retail: It potentially could become one
of the few luxury tech “unicorns” with an
upcoming $5 billion IPO. The lofty valuation marks a remarkable
turn for an industry that had long been resistant to selling online,
fearful that the internet’s mass access would damage luxury brands’
exclusivity. But now luxury fashion houses from Louis Vuitton to
Chanel and Gucci have been racing to embrace digital, whether it is
partnering with multi-brand sites like Farfetch, developing their own
platforms or both.

The pivot to digital makes sense: Online sales are
expected to drive future growth in the luxury goods market, making up
25% of the market by 2025 up from an estimated 9% last year,
according to a 2017 report from Bain & Co. That means sales from
offline stores will shrink to 75% of the total from 91%. Such
projections serve as a wake-up call to luxury brands that have long
relied on partners such as department stores — and their own
boutiques — to sell products. But traditional
retailers are struggling and more customers are becoming
comfortable buying luxury goods online.

Apparently this is how you ‘campaign’ in
Russia. “Vote for me or else?”

Sallie Mae- “Learn why scholarships—free money
that you don’t have to pay back—are important and how to search
for them to help you pay for graduate school…. Getting started is
easy; students register
free of charge, fill out a profile that can be updated at any time,
and start searching. The tool responds with matches that
identify relevant scholarships and their award amounts, application
requirements, and deadlines. In addition, Graduate
School Scholarship Search automatically will send updates when it
identifies new matches.”

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.